P.S. Just because Gene Roddenberry liked the FJ blueprints of the Enterprise, which FJ apparently took as a justification to add "approved by Gene Roddenberry" (that would have been the task of Matt Jefferies...), doesn't make these "official".

The little anecdote told by FJ how Gene Roddenberry picked a room for himself on these blueprints but didn't really understand which room he had picked (...) is clear evidence that Gene Roddenberry didn't really understand what he was looking it (which would be a presupposition for a qualified approval, IMHO).

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The FJ blueprints and TM are fully licensed tie-in products, and in that sense are official. Naturally, that is completely irrelevant to whether fans find them satisfactory.

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There ARE a lot of fully licensed tie-in products out there. That status doesn't, however, validate them as being representative of what viewers of the show watched and fell in love with.

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This.

Indeed there is a line in the TNG TM that says fans are free to accept or ignore whatever is between the covers of said reference book. I think that sentiment could apply to any technical reference book since the content could be superseded by an as yet to be produced episode or film. Of course the likelihood of that now depends upon whether TPTB ever opt or return to the original continuity.

Some of these props (like the coffee pot, gray solo cups, tray, bowl, plates, utensils) look like something someone sneaked off the craft services table because it was easier.

Oh, by the way, right now I'm trying to model the phaser assembly I think Greg Jein did for the show, but only seen on a shipboard display obliquely. It will be my first public Sketchup model, so be gentle.

An explaination as to why the Enterprise compliment increased from 203 to 430, what changed to require this.

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Quick Trekkie rationalization off the top of my head: Pike's mission was peacekeeping and patrol. Kirk's mission was that PLUS exploration, requiring additional science teams.

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Works for me.

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If I had time to pull my books out I could perhaps help explain this. In the early development of the series the ship was meant to be very small. Just a couple of hundred feet not 1000 or so. The original crew compliment was rather small. Perhaps the crew size grew with the ship.

The size of the ship was doubled from the first pilot episode to the production episodes. They modified the miniatures buy adding a second row of windows around the saucer edge; thus making it appear as two decks instead of one (since the pilot version only had one row of windows around the perimeter of the saucer). Also shortening up the bridge was done to be more in scale with a ship twice the original proposed size.

The size of the ship was doubled from the first pilot episode to the production episodes. They modified the miniatures buy adding a second row of windows around the saucer edge; thus making it appear as two decks instead of one (since the pilot version only had one row of windows around the perimeter of the saucer). Also shortening up the bridge was done to be more in scale with a ship twice the original proposed size.

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I´m not sure about that. While it´s true, that the first model had only one row of windows in the rim of the saucer, that row was at the same relative height as in the 11-foot production model. Likewise the relative size of the windows stayed basically the same, as did the placement and spacing of window rows in the secondary hull.

Thus it seems unlikely IMHO, that the "Kirk-Enterprise" was intended to be twice the size of the "Pike-Enterprise".

Allow me some clarification regarding crew size which, unfortunately, is a can of worms.

The Making of Star Trek is specific that the Enterprise was, indeed, to be considered to be a much smaller ship with a crew complement of 203 lives.

Once they had settled on the actual size of the ship (around 1,000') they forgot to upgrade the screenplay to reflect the increase in size, thus the Pike Enterprise got stuck with only 203 crew members.

In TMoST Gene Roddenberry explained the increase of number by having "expendable" mission and planetary specialists aboard that would be left behind on a new planet for survey and examination. Instead of having the ship return each time to a port to replenish crew personnel, they could theoretically deploy 227 people on planets and elsewhere to keep the crew strength essential to control the ship at 203.

Unfortunately (I can imagine Bobby Justman throwing fits about this inaccuracy ), they changed that concept by the time of "The Ultimate Computer" where suddenly 430 people were required to operate the ship.

Unfortunately this onscreen and canonical information abolished Roddenberry's (good) intention and leaves us stuck to come up with an "in-universe" rationalization why the personnel strength had to increase in a time period of 13 years from 203 to 430...

This doesn't really suggest a technical evolution if you require more and more people to run a starship unless the ship starts to fall apart and requires constant maintenance and repair (unfortunately that's not really a sound theory, either, because we had much more crew personnel roaming the ship's corridors in the first season in contrast to the third, where the ship often appeared to be deserted!).

Apparently they decided to cut down production costs for extra actors but forgot to adapt their "in-universe" crew strength.

Looks like Starfleet had a good idea when they authorized the M-5 computer research. Maybe the M-5 could have been kept under control, had they only intended to reduce personnel back to 203 and not just 20.

I'm talking about things like Vulcan wedding gowns and civilian clothes. T'Pring's bridal gown could easily been one of dozens that year in the V'rawang catalog, or whatever. I'd suggest doing pages of something like that instead of shoehorning it into a Starfleet manual.

Documenting the general elements of Vulcan culture we've seen, such as the ceremonial weapons, might better be done in a Vulcan Science Academy manual on Vulcan history and culture. Pages from that could be fun, for some.

Standardized ambassador clothing might come out of a Federation manual for diplomats, and so forth.

I'm talking about things like Vulcan wedding gowns and civilian clothes. T'Pring's bridal gown could easily been one of dozens that year in the V'rawang catalog, or whatever. I'd suggest doing pages of something like that instead of shoehorning it into a Starfleet manual.

Documenting the general elements of Vulcan culture we've seen, such as the ceremonial weapons, might better be done in a Vulcan Science Academy manual on Vulcan history and culture. Pages from that could be fun, for some.

Standardized ambassador clothing might come out of a Federation manual for diplomats, and so forth.

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Approaching it as a combination Technical Manual/Mission Log, as I'm considering doing, would give me freedom to dig into the episodes in ways that wouldn't make sense within the strict framework of a TM alone.

Approaching it as a combination Technical Manual/Mission Log, as I'm considering doing, would give me freedom to dig into the episodes in ways that wouldn't make sense within the strict framework of a TM alone.